Permafrost warming in parts of Alaska 'is

accelerating'

Scientists are concerned that in a warming world, some of this permanently frozen layer
will thaw out and release methane gas contained in the icy, organic material.
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and researchers estimate that the amount in
permafrost equates to more than double the amount of carbon currently in the
atmosphere.

Melting fast
Worries over the current state of permafrost have been reinforced by Prof Romanovsky.
A professor at the University of Alaska, he is also the head of the Global Terrestrial
Network for Permafrost, the primary international monitoring programme.
He says that in the northern region of Alaska, the permafrost has been warming at about
one-tenth of a degree Celsius per year since the mid 2000s.
"When we started measurements it was -8C, but now it's coming to almost -2.5 on the
Arctic coast. It is unbelievable - that's the temperature we should have here in central
Alaska around Fairbanks but not there," he told BBC News.
In Alaska, the warming of the permafrost has been linked to trees toppling, roads buckling
and the development of sinkholes.
Prof Romanovsky says that the current evidence indicates that in parts of Alaska, around
Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope, the permafrost will not just warm up but will thaw by
about 2070-80.
"It was assumed it would be stable for this century but it seems that's not true any more,"
he told BBC News.

'Convincing' case
He says the current permafrost evidence has convinced him that global warming is real
and not just a product of natural variation.
"Ten years ago, if you asked permafrost scientists around the globe I would say 98%
would say: 'The thawing at Prudhoe Bay won't happen by the end of this century'," Prof

Romanovsky explained.

"But now I think it is very possible, and I changed my opinion right during the last four
years. I was in the 98%, but now I say it's possible.
"About 10 years ago when I looked at our records, I said that they all show that permafrost
temperatures should cool down a bit on multi-decadal timescales.
"I told myself that if it would not cool down I would 100% believe in global warming, and
now I believe 100% that we have this very serious trend of warming," he said.
While engineering can prevent the thawing of permafrost underneath important structures,
there is little that can be done to prevent the general melting of the layer.
Scientists believe that the thawing will be gradual, with no major tipping point. There are
many unknown factors about the rate of thawing and whether the impacts will be the same
across all Arctic regions.
There are also concerns about the bubbling of methane from undersea permafrost in the
shallow waters off the Russian Arctic, but researchers say they do not know yet how
significant this might be.
There is also a worry about giant sinkholes, some of which appeared in Siberia last year.
Experts say that melting permafrost may have unleashed enough methane
to cause the ejection of material that formed the holes.

Indirect impacts
Another expert in the field acknowledged that while the problems in Alaska were serious,
scientists were getting a better handle on the amounts of carbon that were likely to be
released.
However, Prof Ted Schuur from Northern Arizona University recognised that, despite the
scientific progress, the fact was that thawing would occur and methane would leach into
the atmosphere.
"Even if we stopped all emissions today, the Arctic has momentum where there is going to
be more warming, more permafrost degradation and some carbon coming out already - we
have started the ball rolling in some senses."
"It is probably not triggering a runaway climate effect but it adds to our problem. It

accelerates the problem, of climate change. To me that is worrisome because it makes the
problem harder."
Prof Schuur added that indirect impacts of warming were also speeding the thaw. In
Alaska in 2015, there were near-record wildfires, which he said heightens the exposure of
permafrost to warmer air.
He believes that political negotiations on a new global climate deal, currently underway in
Germany and set to conclude in Paris in December, are essential to the long term
preservation of permafrost.
"The climate negotiators meeting in Bonn, and in Paris, won't immediately be able to
change what happens with the fire season in Alaska next year, but we can slow the
process down by focussing on human emissions and in my mind that's the best bet to
have the most control.
"It's very hard to control these landscape global processes that are occurring in the Arctic."
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Obama promotes anti-heroin strategy in

coal country
People in West Virginia don't like Barack Obama. But in a state with the nation's
highest rate of lethal overdoses, they're ready to try anything - even the president's
lefty approach to fighting drugs.
Obama is talking with people in an auditorium at the old Roosevelt Junior High School,
which is now a community centre in the Charleston, West Virginia's East End
neighbourhood.
He's open-minded about drugs. As he wrote in his 1995 book, Dreams From My Father, he
smoked marijuana and tried cocaine when he was in high school.
(He doesn't anymore. When I asked a spokesman, Eric Schultz, on Air Force One whether
the president smoked pot in the White House, Schultz gave me a hard stare and said:
"No.")

Yet it doesn't take "Freudian analysis", as Jonathan Caulkins of Carnegie Mellon University
says, to understand why Obama favours innovative ways to look at the nation's drug
problem.
The number of lethal heroin overdoses in the US has nearly tripled in three years,
experts write, with more than 8,250 people dying every year.
The number of those who've overdosed on prescription drugs has also jumped. About
23,000 people died in 2013, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, twice the
number from 2001.

The president no longer has faith in draconian measures once championed by "drug
warriors", as Keith Humphreys, a Stanford professor who served as a senior adviser in the
Obama White House, describes them.
"There was a mentality for a long time that said: 'They don't need treatment'," Humphreys
says. "'They need a kick in the ass'."
Humphreys grew up in West Virginia. A lot of these warriors were living in his home state.
Many were in the room with Obama.
The president's visit to West Virginia, a state once known for coal mining and now for
heroin, is part of his effort to combat drug abuse and reform the criminal justice system.
He wants to help addicts, not punish them, and has pushed for new sentencing laws for
non-violent drug offenders so they don't spend decades behind bars.
He says law enforcement remains part of the effort against drugs. But he says authorities
should target "drug kingpins and violent gangs".
Still old habits die hard, and his visit underscores challenges that remain.
In August, White House officials announced they were investing $13.4m (8.7m) to help
states and local governments in the Appalachians, a region that includes West Virginia,
learn more about heroin trafficking and its use. Beyond that, the federal government
spends billions to fight drug abuse across the country.
Obama also wants to provide training for physicians who prescribe opioids - and wants to
see more physicians certified to prescribe buprenorphine, which helps those with
addictions.

For these efforts, Obama needs the people in the room.

In foreign policy, the president has a lot of control. When it comes to fighting drugs,
though, he has to depend on others.
"The president can push," says Peter Reuter, a criminal justice professor at the University
of Maryland. "But it's still up to states."
In the US, officials at the state and local level run prisons and police departments and
come up with programmes to fight drug abuse.
"This is going to have to be everybody working together," Obama tells about 250 political
leaders, law enforcement officials and healthcare workers who've gathered at the
community centre. It's a place that's been hit hard.
He's speaking on a stage in a basketball court in the old school, a limestone-and-brick
building on Ruffner Avenue that dates to the 1920s. A hoop is attached to one of the paleyellow walls. A scoreboard is mounted nearby. The ceiling has missing tiles, and chunks of
paint dangle over the room.
In the morning old people come here for exercise class, and children show up later for an
after-school programme. Police officers from the city's traffic unit also work here.
The people in the room have over time developed a nuanced view of the problem - and of
the president.
Jim Johnson, who works in nearby Huntington as director of the mayor's office on drug
policy, is sitting in the fourth row. He admits the president is an unlikely hero.

"President Obama is not popular in the state of West Virginia," he says. "But this problem
is bigger than anything we have ever faced."
For many here the problem isn't political, it's personal. One guest, John Temple, a
university professor in West Virginia who has written a book about addiction, American
Pain, has seen students fall into the world of prescription drugs.
Obama is sitting next to Michael Botticelli, the director of the White House office of national
drug control policy who has been in treatment for alcohol abuse. West Virginia Gov Earl
Ray Tomblin's brother was arrested for distributing an illegal drug. Charleston Mayor
Danny Jones' 25-year-old son has been arrested for possession of drugs.

"The users are them," Humphreys says. "It shows you this is everywhere."
One speaker, Jordan Coughlen, a student at West Virginia University, says he's on "longterm recovery". His dark hair is neatly slicked back and he's wearing pressed trousers.
"Opiates were my lover, my teacher and my best friend," he says.
Afterwards Obama thanks him for speaking out. "Jordan is living proof that when it comes
to substance abuse," he says, treatment and recovery are possible.
But change takes time.
After White House officials announced their initiative to look at drug trafficking in the
Appalachians, an enlightened effort that emphasises health and safety rather than punitive
measures, police officers arrested nearly 100 people in the central part of West Virginia in
August.
Known as Operation Mountain Justice, it was "the largest mass arrest of alleged drug
offenders in West Virginia history", at least according to local news.
The people arrested didn't seem like drug kingpins. Many had been workers in the local
mines.
The coal industry has suffered. West Virginia now has one of the nation's highest
unemployment rates. "People have nothing to live for," says a physician, Hassan Amjad,
who practices 60 miles from Charleston.
Some of his patients have black lung, a deadly respiratory disease that afflicts miners.
Others are addicted to drugs. He prescribes an opioid called Suboxone to help.
Amjad tells me people in West Virginia hate Obama because of his environmental policies.
They believe his push for climate change regulations have hurt the coal industry and made
things harder for them.
(Flying on Air Force One, Schultz acknowledges that things have been tough here. Still as
he says: "The decline in coal jobs started well before this president came into office.")
But still they've welcomed him to the event on Wednesday.
Charleston Police Chief Brent Webster is sitting on the stage with the president. Webster is
bald and athletic, and he's wearing his blue uniform.
"We basically have a community of zombies for lack of a better word, walking around," he

says. The federal money, he says, helps them get addicts into treatment.

In his heart, though, he's still a police officer - and wants to lock up bad guys. "We can
always use additional law enforcement resources - I'm not going to lie to you," he tells the
president. Obama laughs.
Other people in the room say they understand. As a former West Virginia police chief,
Johnson - now the director of the mayor's office on drug policy office in Huntington - is
hardly a progressive, but he's starting to think like one.
He says he doesn't know the details of the mass arrest that took place in August in the
central part of the state, for example.
But he knows about one that was done last year, by his former colleagues in the
Huntington police department. They picked up a couple hundred people, he said, but many
were just addicts. Meanwhile people kept overdosing.
"We came to the realisation that we couldn't arrest our way out of the drug problem," he
says.
He says they tracked drugs in their city on a screen with topographical-like makings - "like
a weather map". More than a decade ago, drugs were found in small areas around town.
Last year they were everywhere.
"It was so dramatic," he says, describing the maps. "It looks like a sunny day in 2004 and
like a thunderstorm in 2014."

He and others have fought drugs in their town for years, and things were only getting
worse.
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting
different results," he says.
Towards the end of his presentation, Obama says people now have a better understanding
of what needs to be done. But it's still hard. "We've got to make sure the money is
following the insight," he says.
Obama unclips a microphone and steps down from the stage. He shakes hands with
people in the audience and smiles. A John Denver song, Take Me Home, Country Roads,
suddenly blares out of loudspeakers.

The mood is festive, a sharp contrast to the sombre moments during the event. But not
everybody looks upbeat.
Temple is standing in the back, holding a copy of his book under his arm.
"I think it's amazing that he's here but policy-wise there's more that needs to be done," he
says.
"If this were another disease, we'd be pulling out the stops," he says, watching the
president at the front of the room.
He knows it's not Obama's fault. But he shakes his head as if to say: it's frustrating.

Crocodiles sleep with one eye watching

Crocodiles can sleep with one eye open, according to a study from Australia.
In doing so they join a list of animals with this ability, which includes some birds, dolphins
and other reptiles.
Writing in the Journal of Experimental Biology, the researchers say the crocs are
probably sleeping with one brain hemisphere at a time, leaving one half of the brain active
and on the lookout.
Consistent with this idea, the crocs in the study were more likely to leave one eye open in
the presence of a human.
They also kept that single eye trained directly on the interloper, said senior author John
Lesku.
"They definitely monitored the human when they were in the room. But even after the
human left the room, the animal still kept its open eye directed towards the location
where the human had been - suggesting that they were keeping an eye out for potential

threats."
The experiments were done in an aquarium lined with infrared cameras, to monitor
juvenile crocodiles day and night.
"These animals are not particularly amenable to handling; they are a little snippy. So we
had to limit all of our work to juvenile crocodiles, about 40-50cm long," said Dr Lesku, from
La Trobe University in Melbourne.
As well as placing a human in the room for certain periods, the team tested the effect of
having other young crocs around. Sure enough, these also tended to attract the gaze of
any reptiles dozing with only one eye.
This matches what is known of "unihemispheric sleep" in aquatic mammals, such as
walruses and dolphins, which seem to use one eye to make sure they stick together in a
group.
By contrast, birds use this strategy to watch out for predators. "In threatening situations,
birds will increase their use of unihemispheric sleep and maintain their open eye on any
potential threat," Dr Lesku explained.
"It seems to be a bit of both, in the case of these juvenile saltwater crocodiles."

Everybody else is doing it

The next step will be to confirm that, as well as simply opening one eye, the crocs are
indeed only - physiologically - half asleep.
"Ultimately we would require electrophysiological recordings - so you'd have to look at
brain waves in both hemispheres of a sleeping crocodile, to say: is one hemisphere awake
while the other is asleep."
Dr Lesku is already preparing those experiments, working with colleagues in Germany to
stick electrodes - carefully - on the heads of Nile crocodiles.

Meanwhile, the discovery of one-eyed sleep in crocodiles firmly fixes this capacity to yet
another branch of the evolutionary tree.
We and our fellow land mammals, it seems, are running out of company in our allconsuming slumber.

"To me, the most exciting thing about these results is they provide some evidence to think
that the way we sleep might be novel, in an evolutionary sense," Dr Lesku said.
Half-brain sleeping, he explained, may have evolved in a shared ancestor of reptiles and
birds, and separately in the aquatic mammals - or perhaps in an even more distant
ancestor, shared by birds, reptiles and mammals, before ancient land mammals somehow
lost the knack.
"We tend to think of our sleep as the norm: a behavioural shutdown that is a whole-brain
affair. And yet if birds sleep unihemispherically, and if crocodiles and other reptiles that
engage in unilateral eye closure - if it turns out that they are also also sleeping
unihemispherically, then suddenly our sleep becomes unusual.
"Then, pretty much the only things that aren't sleeping this way are the terrestrial
mammals."

Are productivity apps more hype than

help?
There are hundreds of apps claiming to help us become more productive, efficient
and organised.
And the smartphone is to blame, says Dr Sharon McDonald, a reader in computing at the
University of Sunderland.
"In theory, people can now make better use of what might have previously been 'dead
time' - for example, making notes during the daily commute.
"Thus productivity apps tie in with the basic notion of increasing productivity by using one's
time in a smarter way."
The sector is expected to be worth $58bn (37bn) globally by 2016, according to app
research firm VisionMobile.

And research from software company Salesforce.com last year suggested such apps can
boost worker productivity by more than 34%.
But are they really more hype than help?

Exasperation v. addiction
They're a "massive" waste of time, thinks Crawford Warnock, managing director of PR and
communications agency, Firstname Communications.
"I have used Evernote, Outlook, reminders on the iPhone, Procraster and stacks of others.
They all follow the same pattern - enthusiastic use and exploration followed by a moment
of frustration, and then they fall off."
He is not alone in experiencing app exasperation. Yet others swear by them.
David Carr, strategy director at marketing and technology agency, Digitas LBi, says he is
"addicted" to Evernote, the popular cloud-based app designed for note taking, archiving,
and collaboration.

Productivity apps: 2015 Webby Award winners and

nominees
Evernote iOS app
Pocket
Swipes
Humin
Boxer

Having stuck doggedly with Delicious - the social bookmarking service - to store links to
interesting articles, the experience became "so bad" that he fell into the arms of Evernote.
"Now I'm addicted to it. It has transformed how I capture thoughts, insights and articles.
I've become a taxonomy geek happily tagging everything I come across for later recall."

Mr Carr has set up nearly 2,000 tags for his saved content and expects to add many more.
"It lets me get on with the actual thinking and collaborating rather than chasing down
elusive examples," he says.

'Achieving more'
But Jon Cunningham, consultant at business development agency, Hob-Nob New
Business, takes an opposing view.
"Evernote became an unmanageable beast," he says. "Too many search variables, and
too difficult to discern the important and urgent from everything else."
Instead, he was seduced by the charms of Trello, a project management app that uses
"cards" and "boards" to segment projects and allocate tasks between colleagues.
It has won his heart - for now - chiefly enabling him to operate an "empty email inbox
policy".

"I can forward emails to a Trello inbox then allocate the job to another person ...it's a much
more useful tool for getting things done," he says.
Tom Roberts, managing director of Tribal Worldwide London, goes so far as to say that
Trello runs his life.
"Right now, we have a large pitch on and we are using Trello to run and orchestrate the
entire process. For me it's less about time saving, exactly, and more about achieving more
during the working day."

Joined-up working?
But the smartphone has also become a double-edged sword, facilitating the "always on"
culture and eating into our leisure time.
And Jonathan Green, a director at consultancy KPMG, says that while many productivity
apps are "profoundly useful at an individual level", they have limited benefits for
employees of larger organisations due to lack of integration with existing IT systems.

"It means there is discontinuity in how employees work as they move away from their
desk," he says.

Security concerns
This lack of integration also raises data security issues, something LBi's Mr Carr
acknowledges.
He says he and some of his colleagues are using the Evernote app via a personal, free or
premium account, which has security implications because they are not specifically
designed for business.
"While we wouldn't use the service for highly sensitive material, this does mean that noncritical information, even if it is raw notes, recordings or web links, is being stored on US
servers."

This means the data could theoretically be nabbed by US authorities under the USA
Patriot Act.
And with the recent decision by the European Court of Justice to tear up
the Safe Harbour data-sharing agreement between the US and Europe,
businesses need to be even more alert as to where and how their potentially sensitive data
is being stored.

Cutting the slack

Despite such drawbacks, there is an undoubted thirst for tech that helps - or seems to help
- make our working lives easier.
Take Slack, for example, a popular real-time messaging app that spans desktop and
mobile.
Alex Hamilton, chief executive of Radiant Law, a corporate law firm with offices in London
and Cape Town, says his firm adopted the app to help tackle the deluge of emails.

"We have pretty much got rid of internal emails," he says. "The ability to channel
discussions is very powerful, and the ability for anyone to join open conversations has
helped us really boost transparency across the firm.
"Most of all, it's just really easy to use and people like using it."

Fun and simplicity seem to be key to a productivity app's success.

"Like any good relationship, you have to commit fully to your chosen productivity app as
it's easy to slip out of using it when the honeymoon period is over," says Jason Cartwright,
boss of web development agency, Potato. He is a fan of both Trello and Slack.
But try telling that to Crawford Warnock. He maintains that his best investment has been a
wallboard "and more pens".